Saturday, April 30, 2016

Nit-picking at Amazon's interface

I'm getting spoiled -- enough so that small annoyances in a user interface stay with me.  Perhaps it's the obsessive need to figure out the issues with my own websites, or perhaps it's just a feeling of consumer indignation, that I'm not getting the service I deserve.  But this little thing drives me nuts:

I recently signed up for Starz as an add-on to Amazon Video.  It's not a bad deal, with lots of movies on demand and a good selection that includes a lot of old favorites.  Plenty of romantic comedies (my soft spot), where Netflix and Amazon themselves seem to be lagging in that area.

But in order to find a movie on Starz, I either have to search for the title I want, or skim through rows and rows of movies.  This is the usual sitch with Roku channels, so not the end of the world.  But once I watch a film, I can't back up to the page I was looking at.  The whole system refreshes, reloading Starz and requiring me to scroll through all over again.  There's no "Continue Watching" area that really works, so I'm constantly looking around for a vague inclination, e.g. "I know I saw something right before I starting watching this..."

Of course, this is not earth-shattering.  It's not even maddening.  But it would be so good if Amazon would pay more attention to this sort of thing, and stop messing with the usual features, such as burying the Watchlist, making search less effective, and generally manipulating what we see so that we watch the Prime titles that make them the most money.

I love being a cord-cutter.  But sometimes the lack of control is a bitch.  Just a little rant for the day.

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